Passages from Short Fiction

Every attempt to make mankind happy has failed. One dog has not.

Man’s nature is such, that happiness appears to be a thing unattainable; unconsciously and unintentionally friend offends friend, and even lovers inevitably fall out and quarrel at times. And since all legislators, from Lycurgus down to those of today, in their attempts to bestow happiness on mankind have failed miserably, I can at least comfort myself greatly with the thought of having made even one dog happy.

What a garden looks like when it is built to keep two people apart.

When my sister was attacked by the contagious disease to which all the members of our family have been victims, and she came to share my retreat, we had never seen one another. The shock was great when she saw me for the first time; and the fear of distressing her, and the still greater fear of increasing her malady through my presence, compelled me to adopt this sad arrangement. The leprosy had attacked her chest only; and I had some hope of her recovery. You see what is left of the trellis which I have allowed to fall into neglect. It was a hedge of hops that I trained with care, and which divided the garden into two parts. I had shaped on each side a narrow path, along which we could walk and talk together, without seeing one another, or approaching one another too nearly.

The loneliness that only a crowd can teach you.

In setting out on her pilgrimage, she was prepared to meet, with resignation, all the sufferings and dangers, which, in her ignorance of the world, she could represent to herself; the inclemency of winter, oppressive heat, hunger, nakedness, diseases, death: but since she had become a little more acquainted with larger collections of men, than in her village of Ischim, she feared her courage would be insufficient. In the wilderness, she had no conception of the mournful and chilling solitude, that awaits the poor in populous cities: she did not imagine, that thousands of fellow-beings would walk by her, without seeing her, and without listening to her prayers, as if they had no eyes for misery, nor ears for sighs and lamentations.

The stars too faint to see are the ones worth travelling to.

The most brilliant stars have never been those at which I look with most pleasure. My favourite stars have always been those which look like the minutest and faintest dots in the depths of the sky. And this is easily accounted for: by compelling my imagination to travel as far beyond their sphere as my vision does from this to reach them, I can, with very little effort, transport myself to distant regions, to which few travellers before me have ever attained, and then I marvel that I am still only on the threshold of this immense universe. For it would be absurd to think that there is anywhere a barrier beyond which void commences; as if it were easier to imagine nonexistence than existence!

What it takes to be the happiest person awake in the whole world.

Next to my armchair, as we go northward, my bed comes into sight. It is placed at the end of my room, and forms the most agreeable perspective. It is very pleasantly situated, and the earliest rays of the sun play upon my curtains. On fine summer days I see them come creeping, as the sun rises, all along the whitened wall. The elm-trees opposite my windows divide them into a thousand patterns as they dance upon my bed, and, reflecting its rose-and-white color, shed a charming tint around. I hear the confused twitter of the swallows that have taken possession of my roof, and the warbling of the birds that people the elms. Then do a thousand smiling fancies fill my soul; and in the whole universe no being enjoys an awakening so delightful, so peaceful, as mine.

What is actually taken from you when they shut the door.

This day, certain persons on whom I am dependent affect to restore me to liberty. As if they had ever deprived me of it! As if it were in their power to snatch it from me for a single moment, and to hinder me from traversing, at my own good pleasure, the vast space that ever lies open before me! They have forbidden me to go at large in a city, a mere speck, and have left open to me the whole universe, in which immensity and eternity obey me.

How to keep liking a life you would not have chosen.

Troubles and vexations make the hours seem long; but the years always roll on with the same speed. And then, somehow, however unhappy one is, there is an enjoyment most men never experience, and which will seem a very singular one to you; I mean the bare fact of existing and breathing. In fine weather I spend whole days motionless on this rampart enjoying the fresh air, and the beauty of nature. At such times all my ideas are vague and indefinite; sadness rests in my heart without oppressing it; my eyes wander over that open country and the rocks that lie around us. These different aspects are so impressed upon my memory that they form, as it were, a part of my self, and each spot is a friend that I see every day with pleasure.

The one mirror no one has ever managed to look into honestly.

Alas! how rare it is for ugliness to recognize itself and break the mirror! In vain are looking-glasses multiplied around us which reflect light and truth with geometrical exactness. As soon as the rays reach our vision and paint us as we are, self-love slips its deceitful prism between us and our image, and presents a divinity to us.

Where your mind goes when your eyes keep reading without you.

But this requires illustration. When, sir, you are reading a book, and an agreeable idea suddenly enters your imagination, your soul attaches herself to the new idea at once, and forgets the book, while your eyes follow mechanically the words and lines. You get through the page without understanding it, and without remembering what you have read. Now this is because your soul, having ordered her companion to read to her, gave no warning of the short absence she contemplated, so that the other went on reading what the soul no longer attended to.